“When students awaken, the national conversation will change.”- Diane Ravitch, “When Students Awaken“

After a week of googling, and searching around Facebook, I think I’ve finally got most them. I have found that over 150 student protests have been held in the United States thus far in 2012. For some reason, I thought this would take me only a couple hours. I thought student protests for education were only taking place in New York and Pennsylvania (since that’s where I usually hear most of them are occurring), but man, was I wrong. I was pleasantly surprised to find these protests are happening in almost every state. All except for Alabama, Arkansas Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. If you know otherwise, please let me know, and I’ll add them on.

But why do this? As many of those who have been following me for a while, I am huge advocate for the voices of the students. I strongly believe that our education system should thrive off not only professionals\experienced educators in the education system, but what the students have to say. After all, this is their education.

It is also interesting to see the different issues that students are protesting for. Please keep in mind I tried to keep the focus on protests that focused on issues regarding anything that dealt with education or the school. Aside from the common protests to save teachers, protests against tuition hikes and budget cuts, there are more issues students are concerned about than I originally perceived. One school protested for their dress code, others for longer lunch periods, and some for the right to carry weapons on campus. It’s also important to note that the protests are being held from students as young as elementary school, all the way up to graduate school students.

Now, I am interested in how we can bring all these students together into one huge movement. Individually these voices are making sparks, but if we had a way to bring them all together, we can really make something remarkable happen. Students are waking up, and I don’t think they are going back to sleep soon.

Stephanie Rivera is a 20 year old Junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She studies Education and English. She envisions the future of education structured by those experienced in the field and the students. She hopes to expand other’s activism and awareness about Educational Equity issues by elevating voices of students themselves.